Until the Next Dance
by Society's Cavity
Summary: A cliched reaction to a lover's death and a happy ending that's a little unorthodox. Remus Lupin remembers a night full of alcohol, sex, and dancing he spent with his best friend years ago.


**Until the Next Dance**

* * *

Memories were scattered like broken glass across the floor, blood seeping through fine lines of scarlet against pale skin. In those shattered memories he was still dancing with that black haired man-child, laughing drunkenly and leaning in for an unreturned kiss.

Cold metal and warm skin, smiling from the floor he remembered his taste, the way his breath so distinctly smelled of alcohol, the impaired judgement that had led to himself on the floor and his incubus laughing above him, clutching his sides. They'd left for the bathrooms, and as the leather clad teenager bent over to puke, his light skinned accomplice held his hair back; it had missed the hair, but not the jacket. Thoughts were so scrambled, and as a vomit stained leather jacket pressed against his chest, he didn't have time to react.

He got his kiss back that night.

Drops of crimson littered the carpet, it would be hell to clean it up. Still dancing, they were dancing, spinning around and around in a circle of blood and vomit, and he was smiling so widely, the warm sensation of a misguided kiss on his neck. Cold, cold steel... searing with ecstasy, he curled up in a fetal position, still dancing on his feet, twirling around.

"It's – it's all over m – my jacket."

"Mmm." Dancing, with people on the streets staring like they were crazy, dancing, dancing with a black haired corpse who was smiling back, hitting the cement hard when they lost consciousness, waking up to an abandoned street, save for a small child who was wondering why a man was lying all alone on the street in a puddle of his own sick.

_But it _wasn't_ mine_....

A knife like fire swept up these memories, scraping away salty tears and salty kisses. The one that stung like alcohol was the first to go, scouring it off with the short blade, banishing it's memory; forgetting the way he'd swelled when canine teeth pushed away skin to find something more, wet tongue healing the wound. A drunken decision turned into an early morning mistake, all alone on that sidewalk.

"Mommy, what is...?"

"Daniel! Get away from that man!"

That smell of alcohol, of semen and cigarette smoke, of vomit and blood, he'd lost himself in, trying to prove to himself that it was real, that it wasn't a wonderful, painful dream... beautiful, beautiful pain....

That curious feeling that nothing mattered, that nothing was real... cured by the sharp kiss of steel, peeling back skin to find blood, no tongue to heal the shooting pain, no warm hand at the nape of his neck, pushing him into a wall, clumsily fumbling with buttons and hooks. Still he was dancing, and all the spinning was making him nauseous. Curled up, stomach bile poured out of his open lips, mingled now with the blood in his lungs. Wretched....

"I love you." But he was too drunk to mean it, he was too drunk to mean anything, yet it felt so wonderful to hear those words... to feel that canine force on him, ripping him apart, saliva and ejaculation mixing on the ground, human fluid... blood trickled from the kiss on his neck, caught up by the blade in his hand, reflecting the shell of the man he had become, reflecting the glimmering memories he'd spilt onto the ground. What beautiful memories, lost to him in a time ceasing to exist.

"I love you."

Breath starting to slow down, he could hear the screaming from the floor below him, the shrill female screeches that told him the old woman was awake again, but the screaming in his own ears was loud enough to block her almost entirely out. Tears fell to the floor for the first time, an entirely new memory, one prettier than the drunken kisses, the blood fetishes, the sex that was too hard and too fast, too painful to feel good... so painful as to be surreal....

What he wouldn't give to be dancing again with that black haired boy in the middle of the street, washing away their recent sin with laughter and smiles. It meant nothing, that collapse on the street, and he'd only been inside the bar when he woke up.

"I'm sorry about... about what I... well, I just had so much to drink...."

"You were good, Padfoot."

"But... but we shouldn't have... have done... you know.... And I hurt you – you're covered in blood."

"Mostly puke."

Mostly blood, now. The screaming got louder. They were dancing, spinning, twirling, and as he collapsed onto the cement a veil shuddered in the background; there would be no one waiting in a bar, no more kisses that tasted like alcohol, only the blood that he coughed up in scarlet clots.

And the dancing....

The knife smiled next to him, the twinkling of a music box drowning out the old woman's screams. _Scream all you want_. The boy's kiss that he had scraped away was soaking now into the carpet. One last taste... that was all he wanted... one last taste of his dancing partner, one last night to fill with the smell of semen and smoke, and one last dance.

One more dance....

Hacking out the kiss he'd just swallowed, he smiled and melted into the carpet, becoming another memory on the floor, the fine lines gradually becoming gaping wounds, staining the pale skin of Remus Lupin's body. Maybe there would be alcohol behind the veil. Maybe there would be another 'I love you' and another taste of Sirius. Maybe there would be another crowded sidewalk that emptied as they danced themselves sick after bloodstained sex. There would be no more sex behind the veil, not like that, not rushed and spattered in crimson. It would be beautiful, it would taste like cold steel and feel like dancing.

Coughing up his lungs, the bloodied knife bowed him gently into death, where one last dance with a certain black haired somebody was waiting for him on a summer night in London.


End file.
